I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Gordon Long last week. Gordon is publisher and editor of Gordon T Long Macro Analytics.The topic was "Financial Repression".What is financial repression? I defined it as "a set of fiscal and monetary policies for the expressed benefit of the ruling class: politicians, banks, and the already wealthy, at the expense of everyone else."

Back in March 2011, author Carmen Reinhart wrote a comment in Bloomberg describing the terms “financial repression.” He wrote: “As they have before in the aftermath of financial crises or wars, governments and central banks are increasingly resorting to a form of “taxation” that helps liquidate the huge overhang of public and private debt and eases the burden of servicing that debt.

In response to the end of the credit cycle, policy makers and central bankers in the high income countries have exponentially increased their presence in the capital markets. Debt issued by governments has soared and central banks are pursuing unorthodox policies--the purpose of which varies from country to country.

By Faisal Humayun: The term financial repression was introduced in the literature by the works of Shaw (1973) and Ronald McKinnon (1973).According to a more recent paper (March 2011), "The Liquidation Of Government Debt" (Carmen M. Reinhart and M. Belen Sbrancia), financial repression is a subtle type of debt restructuring.

In another of his series on Financial Repression, Gordon Long of Market Research and Analytics interviewed Dr. Lacy Hunt, Executive Vice President of Hoisington Investment Management Company. Previously Lacy Hunt was with the Federal Reserve in Dallas, Chief Economicts for the largest bank in Philadelphia, and the chief economist for HSBC (at the time the largest bank in the world).Hoisington manages over $5 billion for pension funds, endowments, insurance companies and others. Hunt has been with Hoisington for 19 years.

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog, This happy story is wrong on multiple counts. The conventional view of the Baby Boomers' retirement is a happy story: since we're living longer and remaining productive longer, Boomers will not be as much of a burden on Gen-X and Gen-Y as doom-and-gloomers assume.

Marc Chandler submits:With crisis comes new vocabulary. Out of the Great Depression came the use of the word "recession" to denote the end of a business cycle rather than crises, panics, and depressions, which had previously been used.